I specifically didn't say fight and this wasn't a reference to someone's mental state having any affect on the user experience. This was simply about the user

I specifically didn't say fight and this wasn't a reference to someone's mental state having any affect on the user experience. This was simply about the user experience itself. A dramatic way of saying that people grasp for hope, not that "beating cancer" requires glimmers of hope, only that the "user experience of cancer" involves the patient/host/victim grasping for them. I'm surprised you read it any other way, but I can see how, yeah this definitely wasn't one of those unquantifiable "beat cancer because they're a strong fighter [and everyone else that didn't was a useless weak wimp that gave up]" voodoo posts. His blog post was one of those glimmers of hope. It is predictable that people do that because they have nothing else. No more, no less. The point is that deep down he still knew the odds and that his mortality was still in question. Its "the last good day", a trope in cancer, where things seem normalizing and improving, but you don't know its the last good day.